Hwever, despite the president’s claims to the contrary, economists have found that the full burden of the tariffs is actually being passed on to U.S. manufacturers and consumers in the form of higher prices, while U.S. farmers are being punished by retaliatory sanctions levied by China.

In addition, last week the administration received two doses of bad economic news. On Friday, the Labor Department reported surprisingly low job growth in February. That followed the announcement by the Commerce Department on Tuesday that the U.S. trade deficit, excluding services, hit its highest level in history at $891 billion in 2018. (Including services, on which the U.S. runs a surplus, the total trade deficit was $621 billion, a 12.5 percent increase over the previous year.)

The factors driving the increased trade deficit are many and varied, and often have little or no connection to the administration’s trade policy.